Apologies for the “supersized” photographs that might have come through in the last blog post.
For a view of how the mail should have looked, please visit www.chrisallan.co.za directly.
Yours in digital ecoms learning curves
Chris
Its been four months. Just long enough for me to start voicing an opinion about KZN and Ballito, our newly adopted home, and not be faced by the normal skeptical eyeball rolling that I often have to deal with when I add my (very often useful, profound, well thought through and normally under appreciated ) opinions into the mix.
So here it is:
Kwa Zulu Natal is cool.
Not literally of course… today the temperature guage is sitting somewhere in the thirties, there is a light breeze, birds are singing cheerfully and the sun is shining down through a cloudless sky the way it neglected to do when half of Johannesburg was sitting inside their holiday homes in Ballito playing scrabble during December. Rain rattled against windows, and the local Dischem sold out of self-tan. (Just kidding my Joburg peeps that visited… I believe there were some cracking days, but alas… I was not there to enjoy them having signed up for an epic road trip of over 3000km for the love of family, friends, South Africa, and a bit of work thrown in to cover the costs. Some pics of the trip below..
Things are a little slower here. Photographic work is coming in but not at the caffeine driven pace of Joburg which we are used to. People want to meet face to face and chat about projects and ideas, and the general optimism about the potential of the North Coast is addictive. King Shaka is said to be driving development (the Airport, not the dead Zulu King) and there does seem to be a steady stream of young Joburg types moving down here to live the eco estate lifestyle and commute easily from the new airport. Images of Estate Living and the airport interior below…
We have a few projects on the go at the moment, one of which is pitching to do some high end real estate work, as some of the homes down here would not be out of place on “MTV Cribs”.
Peppermintpix is still growing, although the flurry of interest over Christmas and New Year has died down a little, allowing us time to do some proper marketing… in fact we have just had an article written on the fledgeling business which should be out in the next month or two. (Links to follow when it all happens!)
I hope you have all had a great start to 2011.
It would be great to hear from you, email me on christopherallan@gmail.com
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Images on the Ballito beaches below..
I found myself at the Ballito Christmas fair a few days back. The ratio of bored husbands to oohing and aahing wives pinballing about from stall to stall was about 25 to 1. Yup. I was that one. This meant that I wandered around in neutral, smiling and nodding and thinking about everything, anything and nothing, in a wonderful weekend daze.
Through a stroke of good luck, I chanced upon a biltong stall and so with glazed over eyes was happily masticating away on some of a local farmers best pre-christmas chilli bites, and my mind settled on musing about the year that was rapidly drawing to a close.
A year ago Em and I were marching up and down volcanos, trekking in and out of jungles, along dodgy streets in Bangkok, cruising rivers in Burma, scuba diving in Thai Seas and occasionally sitting on a tropical island beach for a few days at a time. These are some of the photographs from those adventures that already seem a life time ago.
When we landed in Joburg again, we were long haired, shaggy bearded and our clothes had developed holes in key areas, but we were distracted from our end of travel aches, pains and breezy apparel by a city and country, electric with excitement at the approaching Soccer World Cup.
And what a month. We barely had a chance to catch our breath before we were scooting off to shoot at one of the many magnificent stadiums. I wandered around through the crowds grinning and clicking, lapping up the once in a life time atmosphere. Check out some of the buzz that we caught through the camera here.
Too soon it was all over. Sandton city was returned to the fabulous care of the Kugels, soccer paraphernalia went on half price sale, and South Africa smiled a content, proud, relieved smile, having left a permanent, positive mark on sporting history.
At this point we were struck with more luck.. and slotted into some empty spots to make up one of the coolest crews ever to do the Otter Trail. And it was spectacular. Here are a handful of the pics from those memorable few days below:
Once again we arrived back in Joburg with aches and pains, but this time there was rent to pay, and Peppermintpix (fantastic family photography if you hadn’t heard!) was still a baby, not yet the success that it now looks destined to be.
We needed work, and thanks to some timeous introductions by the most awesome of people I was able to indulge in a secret photographic passion I have had for a while now. The photographing of mouthwatering, delectable and delightful…food! We shot images for the new Fego menu, and are now big fans of this neat restaurant and coffee shop chain.
In the months following we had images blown up to the size of a wall in an office, we photographed fruit smoothies, office interiors, and glamorous evening events with Elizabeth Arden. I even travelled to Uganda for a few days to shoot at Makerere University, and totally fell in love with the country.
Double A Images had some great sales, and after a few more shoots recently, the lifestyle stock photo business seems solid with opportunities.
And now we find ourselves in Ballito. North Coast of Natal. We share a garage with a green snake, the balcony with cheeky wagtails and a Wooly Necked Stork who visits at breakfast time.
The beach is 5 min away and the mountains 2 hrs away. The business is coming in …slowly. The plan is to spend at least a week a month in Joburg, shooting and socializing and 3 weeks a month in Natal, working hard at breaking into the photo market and not becoming beach bums.
I hope this blog entry finds all of you well, and prepared for the final push that will end what was for Emily and I, a phenomenal year.
Thanks for reading, and if you know of anyone that is in need of our photographic services in Natal or Joburg, please drop them, or us a mail. Send them to my website…Or if you just want to say hi… please do!
All the best
Chris
PS Below are a few random favourites from a great year…
You might have received an odd seeming post about a travel decision to visit Bali, and photographs from the Island. You may also have experienced some serious deja vu while reading the post. Thats because you have probably read the post before….
Last night I discovered that my blog site had been hacked! (May the pimply faced SOB responsible develop terminal Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) and in the process of reloading the site an old blog was triggered and sent to the distribution list.
Hopefully the problem is sorted out and the internet FBI are hot on the heels of the culprit.
Some news… Peppermintpix (photographic company focussed on family portrait photography) is picking up momentum and Emily and I have shoots booked in Natal and Joburg. Check out the blog on www.peppermintpix.co.za
Double A Images (our stock photography company that operates out of Joburg) is also going great guns with at least a shoot a month to be proud of. Check out some of the images from our lates shoot at the end of this mail: (www.2aimages.co.za)
This weekend promises to be one to remember, with the Stormers and the Bulls battling it out in Soweto, the Comrades marathon on Sunday, and World Cup fever building with every day that goes by!
Have a good one
Chris
It seems as if it were just last week that we were being bombarded by the sights, sounds and smells of Bombay. But the truth is we have been back in sunny SA for almost a month, and while backpacks and guidebooks gather dust in the corner of the room, the pace we set in India has not slowed for a second as we try to take in a home city transformed in readiness for the 2010 world cup!
At the moment we are perched in Joburg, dipping into the archives of photos gathered on our travels and finding useful places to put them. In total we shot more than 30 000 photographs and filled more than 400 Gigs of hard drives, so this is no small task. Below is one more batch of pics from India.
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On to other exciting news….
We arrived home to find everybody pregnant or with a newborn kid or two! One brainstorming session lead to another and before we knew it, we were launching Peppermintpix, a photographic company whose purpose is to capture special moments in people’s family lives. High quality maternity, baby and family portraiture in the comfort of your own home.
Check out www.peppermintpix.co.za for some of the shoots that we have done for families in and around Joburg.